My laptop (bless) is locked down.<\/p>\n
Yes I put all kinds of software on it but only for a purpose, never for fun. I use it but don’t abuse it.<\/p>\n
The software and OS are locked: two firewall installations and a deny manager for IP feeds coupled with a set of firewall rules that are configured on the basic idea that ‘no’ is the default position for everything.<\/p>\n
Even iTunes isn’t allowed to communicate to the iStore without my specific say so every time, and as for peer-to-peer – forget it!<\/p>\n
I also run blockers – pop-up blockers, function blockers; do a deep disk scan once a day, scan every potential virus source before it’s opened have all attached media scanned before they’re accessed and I run anti-spy ware software in two variants, one daily the other weekly.<\/p>\n
The whole installation gets backed up twice, once a week (each time to distinct file and data repositories).<\/p>\n
This is really boring stuff I know but bear with me.<\/p>\n
My PC at work is riddled.<\/p>\n
There’s something nasty buried inside, every now and then it generates random pop-ups, one – last Thursday – was when my manager was standing next to me but it was OK because the subject of the pop-up was ‘buy a crap PC from Dull and…’. You get the picture.<\/p>\n
Friday it popped up some not good stuff – not ‘work safe’ if you know what I mean.<\/p>\n
I can’t install google toolbar and use the pop-up blocker because that’s against the organisation’s AUP.<\/p>\n
I can’t install any of my favourite anti-nasty tools because they’re all licensed to me and my company – not my customer.<\/p>\n
I phoned the IT hell desk and got a response I’d describe as less than enthusiastic.<\/p>\n
They didn’t turn up to fix it, that’s for sure.<\/p>\n
Perhaps they will next week.<\/p>\n
The OS on my work PC is W2k which, as you might know, is probably the most vulnerable Microsoft OS ever, apart from ME maybe.<\/p>\n
But there’s a point to consider here.<\/p>\n
I’m allowed to install Firefox (praise be!), but I’m not allowed to make it my default browser. I’m not allowed to install any app – don’t have supervisor’s rights – which also means I’m not allowed to install any blockers.<\/p>\n
It’s a bit of a weird situation really – and this line of thinking certainly isn’t pointed specifically at my customer. I know for a fact the thing I’m just going to outline is common in many organisations…<\/p>\n
That there’s often an AUP which governs the conditions the users are expected to operate within, but is there a reciprocal AUP or SLA that the organisation<\/u><\/em> is expected to abide by in checking issues of this nature out?<\/p>\n I realise I’m straying in to the area of reciprocal service management but…<\/p>\n I bet the answer to my question is ‘not often, no’.<\/p>\n Hmmm… maybe I should have put this blog post over on the company blog.<\/p>\n B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My laptop (bless) is locked down. Yes I put all kinds of software on it but only for a purpose, never for fun. I use<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}